University invests £500,000 in dental research

The University of Plymouth is to provide £500,000 funding for the Peninsula Dental School to pursue three important areas of research in partnership with the University, it was announced today. The first area of research will cover statistical epidemiology in oral health, including the review of published evidence and the creation of new approaches to understanding the complexity of dental research data. The second will look at the use of virtual reality and psychological approaches to tackle dental anxiety. The research will examine the extent to which virtual reality could be used to ease anxiety both before and during treatment. The third area of research will consider nanotechnology, toxicology and dentistry. Nanopowders and nanotechnology are used widely in the latest generation of dental filling materials. They are also found in the surfaces of implants, dental tissue engineering and toothpastes and their use has been driven by the demand for materials that are aesthetically pleasing and the desire to move away from a reliance on mercury containing materials such as dental amalgam.